New polls published yesterday suggested that Mr Hollande, 57, was leading the field of 10 candidates in the first round with up to 29 per cent of the vote. He had extended his lead over Mr Sarkozy to between two and four points. In voting intentions for the two-candidate, second round on 6 May, Mr Hollande now leads the President by a "landslide" margin of 14 to 16 per cent.

In a series of damning, private remarks, reported by the Le Canard Enchainé newspaper, senior members of President Sarkozy's government said that defeat now seemed inevitable.

"The carrots are cooked," the Prime Minister, François Fillon, was quoted as saying. "[Sarkozy's] strategy of campaigning on hard-right issues was a serious mistake." The former centre-right prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, was reported to have said privately: "There is no chance of us winning."

The President has also suffered a series of desertions. It was reported earlier this week that the former President Jacques Chirac intended to switch sides and vote for Mr Hollande. A clutch of former Sarkozy ministers and supporters, from the right, left and centre of French politics, have also declared they will vote for the socialist. They include Martin Hirsch and Fadéla Amara, two of Mr Sarkozy's ministerial recruits from the Left after his 2007 election and three former centre-right Chirac-era ministers, Azouz Begag, Corinne Lepage and Brigitte Girardin.

I'd love to see Hollande lead a renaissance among European social democrats, but I get the impression he could well end up rowing back from his more radical positions for fear of being fucked over by the bond markets. Hope I'm wrong.

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.

I'm not entirely convinced by Hollande's "the markets" stuff, mind. Unless he's got a better idea who to borrow money off. And as with the Tories, there's the usual "renegotitate" stuff, as if no-one else might have anything they might want changed in return. Like the CAP for instance.

Our village went for Sarky big-time, but that's big time with an electorate of 183, of whom 163 voted. He got 72 votes. Le Pen did better than I expected, Hollande worse. 3 people voted Green...This is pure farming territory, scattered hameaux and a tiny central hub. Quite a lot of non-voting English and Dutch. Elderly. No industry at all unless you include the man who battery farms rabbits and nobody likes (but he's really in the next commune).

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. Lao Tzu

The Gard looks like it will be the first department ever to put the FN in first place. It's not exactly a surprise: the Gard has more than its share of retired people, pieds-noirs, small-town family businesses and artisans, all constituencies for Le Pen. It also has a lot of immigrants from the Maghreb, some of them undocumented (who do much of the seasonal agricultural labour and are paid au noir), and the biggest population of Gypsies in France, concentrated around the pilgrimage site of the black virgin at Les Saintes Marie de la Mer. The FN has put up its highest scores here and in nearby small towns such as Beaucaire and Saint-Gilles: these are working-class areas of light industry, often heavily dependent on a single employer (the Perrier factory is in Vergèzes and Haribo in Uzès) which have been hit by the délocalisation of small-scale manufacturing to eastern Europe and the Far East.

A generation ago, the Gard and especially its chef-lieu, Nîmes, were a cornerstone of the communist vote. Much of the population is descended from Spanish and Italian migrants who left during the Mussolini and Franco years; Nîmes had a communist mayor for 25 years between 1965 and 2001. That vote has collapsed: although Nîmes just about opted for Hollande yesterday, Mélenchon scored only 13%, which is barely above his national average. It seems that many voters who backed the communist party while they were of working age have switched to the FN since they retired or were made redundant. The threat to pensions is seen as double — from the liberalising right wing and a 'wave' of immigrants putting pressure on the public purse, encouraged by the left — and the FN appears as the party most likely to protect them.